On the complexity of rationalizing behavior

Jose Apesteguia and Miguel Ballester

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: We study the complexity of rationalizing choice behavior. We do so by analyzing two polar cases, and a number of intermediate ones. In our most structured case, that is where choice behavior is defined in universal choice domains and satisfies the "weak axiom of revealed preference," finding the complete preorder rationalizing choice behavior is a simple matter. In the polar case, where no restriction whatsoever is imposed, either on choice behavior or on choice domain, finding the complete preorders that rationalize behavior turns out to be intractable. We show that the task of finding the rationalizing complete preorders is equivalent to a graph problem. This allows the search for existing algorithms in the graph theory literature, for the rationalization of choice.

Keywords: Rationalization; Computational complexity; NP-complete; Arbitrary Choice Domains (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-hpe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: On The Complexity of Rationalizing Behavior (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1048

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